The discovery in Argentina of 25 minutes of lost footage from Metropolis has been heralded as the biggest find in recent film history. Tomorrow, Berkeley film buffs will have a chance to see Fritz Lang’s silent film masterpiece when the Pacific Film Archive screens the acclaimed film on October 19th at 7:00pm.
The restored Metropolis has been playing to great acclaim and sold out crowds around the country. In July, it was screened as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It sold out well in advance. Since then, it has twice returned to the Castro Theater for extended runs.
Unseen since the film’s original 1927 premiere, the newly found footage accounts for nearly a fifth of the entire picture. Led by the F.W. Murnau Foundation in Germany, the restoration incorporated the unearthed footage into the previously restored film, finally putting into place subplots, characters, and events that had long left some viewers baffled.
Lang’s futuristic super-production (once the most expensive film ever made) is an extended anxiety dream of urban dystopia expressed as science fiction. It has been described as the most influential movie ever made.
Set in the year 2026, Metropolis envisions a repressive technoligarchy in which soaring Art Deco towers and overhead freeways mock an underclass of techno slaves ruled by a “supertrustee.” (Sound familiar?) Lang posits a virtual woman, an evil doppelganger cloned from the people’s hero and spokeswoman Maria (played by the sexy Brigitte Helm), as a principal force in this exquisite cinematic ballet of machines and men. The film was penned by Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbou.
The PFA will screen a black-and-white, 148 minute, digital print of Metropolis (silent with English inter-titles). The film stars Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Fritz Rasp – as well as hundreds of extras. It was photographed by Karl Freund and Günther Rittau. Judith Rosenberg will accompany on the piano.
For more info: The restored Metropolis plays at the Pacific Film Archive (2575 Bancroft Way, between College and Telegraph) in Berkeley on Tuesday, October 19th at 7:00pm. This special screening is being co-presented with the Goethe-Institut San Francisco. Ticket Prices: $5.50-$9.50. For more info visit http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN18770
Thomas Gladysz is an arts journalist and author. Recently, he wrote the introduction to the new “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Böhme's classic book, The Diary of a Lost Girl (PandorasBox Press). He will speak about this new book at the San Francisco Public Library on November 14th. More at www.thomasgladysz.com.
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